


on a taxi in the middle of a circus

by ODed_on_jingle_jangle



Series: while your colors bleed [6]
Category: Dare Me (TV 2019), Dare Me - Megan Abbott
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Tragedy, Blood and Gore, Canon - Book & Movie Combination, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Disturbing Themes, Emotional Manipulation, Eye Trauma, F/F, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Major Character Injury, Manipulative Relationship, Mental Instability, Non-Explicit Sex, Not Happy, Psychological Trauma, Recreational Drug Use, Statutory Rape, Strained Relationships, Suicide Attempt, Teacher-Student Relationship, Underage Drinking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:07:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23386360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ODed_on_jingle_jangle/pseuds/ODed_on_jingle_jangle
Summary: Lana picks up the remote and turns the television on. They watch this reality show about people who get attacked by animals and survive. This one idiot asshole brought it on himself, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. He stood on his cabin’s back porch and fed the bears straight from his hand.When Lana gets up to use the bathroom, Addy pinches the rolled bill between her fingers and snorts a line after all. Whatever it is— coke or crank, or crushed up Ritalin —sparkles through her synapses and kicks her heart rate up into wild hare overdrive.She’s not sure which part of this story feels more familiar. The moronic man tempting fate with the steak in his hand, or the grizzly bear shredding his arm to ribbons.
Relationships: Beth Cassidy/Addy Hanlon, Colette French/Addy Hanlon
Series: while your colors bleed [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617898
Comments: 24
Kudos: 79





	on a taxi in the middle of a circus

**Author's Note:**

> So, here it is. My last part of this niche AU collection. Please heed the tags. There is very dark, unsettling, and potentially triggering content ahead. Not to say that this collection didn't already contain that kind of content, but in the following fic, it is even more potent and explicit. 
> 
> Anyway, this fic is a direct continuation of where the previous one in this collection left off. Book spoilers ahead. If you plan on reading the book and don't want to be spoiled, you should probably hit the back button. 
> 
> Assorted details of this AU going forward...Colette's daughter keeps her name from the book. Will dies pre-regionals instead of post. Addy/Beth's first kiss was the book version, a borderline sexual encounter as opposed to the sweeter, more innocent rain kiss in the series. Will's murder remains under investigation, not solved as quickly as it was in the book. 
> 
> Title is from a Herizen song. Also, it's around 5 AM my time, so I'll come back and fix typos later. Sorry if there's a lot of them, but my brain's too mushy to do it rn and I always have an easier time catching them on Ao3.
> 
> Subtle crossover in here because I find Easter Eggs far more amusing than I should, and even cracked up bout it for a hot min despite the dark context.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Addy asks, frowning. “For weeks, you let me think that Will killed himself. For weeks, I was worried he found out about us and just snapped, like it put him over the edge.” 

“I know, I know,” Coach frets guiltily, her eyes wavering. “I’m sorry, Addy, I— oh, Addy!” 

She bows forward, resting her forehead against Addy’s clavicle. 

“I should’ve told you the truth right away, but I was so scared,” she admits, the words muffled into Addy’s skin. “I didn’t know how you’d react. I wanted to protect Caitlin, and I wanted to protect you too.” 

“Protect me?” Addy repeats nebulously. 

“Oh god, yes,” Coach continues, her arms affectionately winding around Addy. “I had a gut feeling Beth was the one who sent the video. And I was worried if you knew, if you called her out on it, she might try to sabotage you too. Or even worse.” 

“N-No,” she stammers. “We’re pissed at each other right now, don’t get me wrong, but Beth would never do anything to hurt me.” 

“Wouldn’t she?” Coach hums skeptically, stroking her hand up and down the rungs of Addy’s spine.   
“Look at the lengths she’ll go to ruin what’s between us. All because she wants you to be her lieutenant at her every beck and call, no more, no less.” 

“She wouldn’t— couldn’t —have known that Matt would go berserk.” 

“I’m not saying she did.” Coach shifts a bit, gently moving her face into the crook of Addy’s neck as she continues rubbing her back in comforting strokes. “But it happened, and it happened because she was too hung up on some petty revenge think things through. You’re not immune to the consequences of her careless actions, Addy. Dire consequences, even, like Will.” 

Addy swallows, dubious, and Coach goes on. 

“It’s not only Beth. I wanted to protect you from Matt too, don’t you see?” 

“B-But you just said he won’t find out about us…” 

Coach pulls back to face her with eyes like gunmetal. Her hands leave Addy’s back and find her upper arms instead, squeezing gently. 

“He won’t, as long as we don’t let him. You have to act normal around him. That’s the other part I was worried about before, that if you knew the truth, you might start acting strangely. Tip him off. You have to promise me you’ll be totally normal, just like you have been.” 

Addy curls her hands into fists, fingernails pressing into her palms as her stomach churns. That gnawing anxiety is back in full force. 

She’s pretty sure she can keep her cool around Matt French. She’s been sleeping with his wife for months and done a decent job of being nothing but polite and placid in his presence despite this. She was the same with Sarge Will, when he was still alive. Sometimes she’d even tag along on Coach’s dates with Will, joke around with him, listen to his weird stories, and pretend that her own private date with Coach wasn’t already planned out. 

But knowing Matt murdered someone, even if unintentionally, just warps him in her eyes. Addy had always thought Matt French was nothing. Even though he was the one who put the rock on Coach’s ring finger, she’d felt more jealously toward Will than Matt French. Matt had always seemed so dull. Boring. Plaster drying in a bowl. 

“I can act normal, Coach,” Addy earnestly swears after a beat of hesitation, struggling to corral the storm of spinning thoughts. “I’m sorry, this is just a lot to take in…” 

“It is,” Coach agrees, lips twitching wistfully. “But I know you can handle it. You’re so strong, Addy, so much stronger than you know. It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with you.” 

The words thrum through Addy and have her melting like a popsicle in the sun, left a sweet, sticky puddle of sentiment. She can’t help smiling despite the darker things she’s learned upon this picnic blanket, a weak smile though it is.

“Can you forgive me for lying?” Coach asks, her hands sliding down to Addy’s, resting warmly overtop. The charm of the hamsa bracelet quivers daintily with the movement. 

Addy turns her hands beneath Coach’s so their palms are flush, her callouses kissed to lotion soft skin. 

“Yeah,” she murmurs, “I mean, I understand why you did it. Be honest with me from now on though, okay?” 

She’s strong, like Coach said she is. Strong enough to handle hard truths, strong enough to rise above them. Of course she is. 

(but) 

“No more lies,” Coach promises, her gaze resolute. “No more secrets kept between us.” 

(her stomach hurts so much)

Coach moves her mouth to Addy’s to seal the sincerity, lips tenderly sliding over lips. Then she lightly pushes Addy back onto the blanket and her breath leaves her lungs in a delicate heather hush. Coach hovers above her, grin like a lunar crescent. 

“I’m gonna make this up to you,” she says, quick fingers already unzipping Addy’s fly. 

Any reservations that might’ve lingered about trusting Coach again are lost in the fog of her head and the heat of her body, as the jeans are stripped away and Coach’s tongue swirls and twirls Addy right to Heaven. 

* * *

  
Addy’s zoning out on the couch while her mom watches the evening news beside her, the LED glow from the television illuminating the room. She messes around on her phone, aimlessly scrolling through RiRi’s Instagram, only glancing up when a headline catches her attention. 

Some music teacher got arrested for having an affair with her student. Sentenced to five years in prison. 

“Good,” grunts her mother. 

“Sounds too harsh to me,” Addy mutters, wrinkling her nose. “Look at her, he totally wanted it.” 

They’ve got the pictures of the teacher and her student onscreen. She’s thirty-something and smoking, model slim with highlights in her hair, pouty lips, these vibrant eyes behind her heart-shaped sunglasses. There’s a black censor block over the student’s eyes to protect his identity, but Addy supposes he’s about her age. Broad-shouldered in a blue and gold varsity jacket, goofy smile, red hair. 

“Excuse me?” her mother gasps beside her, affronted. 

Addy shrugs. “Why should she go to jail for something you know he was down for?”

“I cannot believe the words that are coming out of your mouth right now.” Faith Hanlon is officially in cop mode, firm and unrelenting. “I raised you better than that, Adelaide.” 

“Look at those shoulders, Mom, he’s probably a football player. He could’ve stopped her if he didn’t want it.” Addy gestures to the screen. 

“Rape isn’t always a pill slipped in a drink, or some trenchcoat jumping out the bushes. Sometimes it’s an adult making a decision for a teen that only thinks they’re mature enough to make it. Doesn’t matter how big he is.” 

Addy thinks of pressing her lips to Coach’s in the middle of her living room and digs her fingers into the arm of the couch as her insides squirm. 

“What if he’s the one who came onto her?” 

“That doesn’t matter, either,” Faith immediately declares. “As the adult in that situation, it’d be her responsibility not to engage. Her job to set clear, appropriate boundaries.” 

Addy shrinks awkwardly in her seat and leaves it at that, knowing this is one of those things she and her mother simply won’t agree on. Beth had said the same thing, almost, or at the least that Coach was raping her. But Addy just knows that isn’t true. 

Addy loves Coach and Coach loves her back. They share oceans of affection and trust. Addy admits that her certainty in this momentarily lapsed after it came out that Will was murdered, but having been told the truth, she knows she can get past it. 

She understands why Coach lied to her and she understands that her fear had been fueled by Beth being a worm in her ear, wiggling around and putting things in her head. Coach has since assuaged her worries and promised her that their love is real, her faith in Addy is real, all that they share together is a beautiful thing to behold. 

Addy doesn’t feel like a victim. She feels special and cherished, like hidden treasure Coach unburied. 

She wasn’t anything to anyone before, not like this. 

* * *

When Addy actually does see Matt French again, she manages to stay collected, like she swore to Coach she could. 

“How’s school?” he asks her with that generically courteous smile of his. 

Addy waits for the smile to crack, for dark things to move behind his eyes, for some kind of indication that he is the person she knows him to be now that Coach has told the truth. But nothing happens. He is still unremarkable Matt French, as uninteresting and unassuming as an Idaho potato. 

This should make things easier and somehow it makes them worse. 

“Pretty good,” Addy answers even though she’s barely passing half her classes and can’t seem to keep any of the lessons in her head. 

“I hear you’ve got a big game coming up this weekend.” 

“Yeah. Biggest game of the season.” 

“You ready for it?” 

“Absolutely. All prepared thanks to your wife,” Addy says with a forced, chipper voice. “She’s really whipped us into shape, got us strong, made us rise.” 

“Of that, I’m sure,” Matt chuckles and maybe, just maybe Addy hears a twinge of spite leak through. “You’re her favorite, you know.” 

Addy smiles a broad smile with her lips closed, stretches it until her cheeks hurt, silently biting her tongue to keep the bubbling, delirious laughter inside at bay. 

“She’s my favorite too. Best coach we’ve ever had.” 

Matt checks his watch and then retreats a couple steps back into the hall. “Ah, I’ve got to finish getting ready. Thanks again for babysitting tonight.” 

“No problem.” 

Addy ducks into the living room, where Caitlin is playing with big, colorful foam letters and numbers. She’s so interested in them, she doesn’t notice when Addy sits on the couch. But the moment she does notice, she lets out this bright, happy chirp and toddles over, chubby arms locking around Addy’s leg. 

“Hey, little girl.” Addy gently pats the top of her head, briefly curls Caitlin’s sparse, silky topknot of hair around her finger. 

Caitlin lets go and returns to her pile of colorful foam pieces. She begins to bring them to Addy one by one, placing them in her lap as she babbles excitable noises. It’s pretty cute, really. So cute that Addy finds herself relaxing, even as she hears the voices down the hall heighten and sharpen. Even as she realizes that beyond the walls, Coach and Matt French must be arguing again. 

Her phone buzzes insistently in her pocket, most definitely Beth. Addy doesn’t even pull it out to double-check. She reaches into her pocket and presses her thumb to the button long enough to turn it off.   
  
After Coach and Matt leave, things are quiet for awhile. 

Eventually Caitlin loses interest in bringing Addy her toys, all the foam pieces and rubber rings, and happily smiling stuffed animals spilling over the couch cushions. So Addy puts on this cartoon movie that they watch together, one with pretty princesses singing catchy songs. At some point she pours Caitlin these dry yogurt puffs into a sunny yellow plastic bowl. Tries one herself and spits it out, disliking the strange, artificial aftertaste. 

She’s content on the couch with Caitlin in her lap when a bang against the window makes her jump. Caitlin squawks, startled, Addy grabs her before she can tumble off and cranes her neck to look through the glass. 

Beth peers back at her from the other side, coastal eyes piercing. Addy gasps, mouth going dry. She sets Caitlin aside and hurries to the door, flinging it open. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” 

“I should ask you the same thing,” Beth retorts, ponytail swinging as she comes stomping up the porch steps. “You shouldn’t be here, Addy! Deep down, you know it!” 

“No, no— do you want to know what I really know, Beth?” Addy indignantly crosses her arms over her chest and looms into Beth’s space. “I know you sent that video to Matt. The one you let me think didn’t exist.” 

Surprise flickers across Beth’s face and her breath catches, taken aback. 

“Were you ever going to tell me?” Addy demands, in the pit of her stomach already knowing the answer. 

“I was trying to protect you,” Beth burbles, voice thick and straining. “To protect you from her, from all this fucked up, selfish shit she keeps doing to you.” 

“You’re one to talk about selfish,” Addy scoffs, irate. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Beth? The faintest fucking clue?” 

A tremor makes its way through Beth, from her lips to her fingertips. So subtle, nearly imperceptible. Addy only sees because she knows Beth’s body language better than she knows her own. In the past, before Coach, before last summer, Beth and Addy were very nearly the same entity, and whose physical form was whose was endlessly besides the point. 

“I did what I did for the same reason I’m here right now,” she says, unyielding, squaring her shoulders. “To get you away from her. Goddamnit, Addy, this place is a serpents’ den! After everything that’s happened, you have to know that and yet you’re still here, snuggling up with the vipers!” 

“I am babysitting, Beth!” Addy steps aside swings her arm back, pointing to Caitlin who stands a few lengths away on the carpet, watching them with curious, beetle wide eyes. “Does she look like a viper to you?”

“That’s not why you’re really here,” Beth accuses darkly. “That’s never why you’re really here.” 

“Stop, you just— you have to stop!” Addy throws her hands up and then grabs Beth by the arm, gruffly yanking her inside. 

She can’t make a scene on the porch. For Coach’s sake, she can’t draw the attention of the neighbors. 

Beth jerks her arm out of Addy’s grip with a soft gasp. 

“Stop,” Addy insists vehemently. “We can’t keep fighting about this, over and over again. I’m done, Beth. We can’t go back from what you already did, and you need to stop before you go any farther. I don’t expect you to understand, but Coach loves me.” 

Beth’s eyes widen to moons, blinking rapidly as her jaw screws open. “Are you fucking kidding me?” 

“You don’t have to get it, but you do have to accept it,” Addy pushes back. “I don’t need your protection. I need to be free of you.” 

“Free of me?” Beth echoes, somewhere in between seething and heartbroken.

“Yes,” Addy huffs out, exasperated. “Free of you holding me back, causing me more problems than I already have, messing with my relationship with someone who truly cares about helping me succeed! Coach isn’t the one that’s tearing us apart, Beth, it’s you. You’re the one who’s making me pick a side.” 

Beth flounders. “I’m not trying to make you pick a side, I’m trying to wake you up! She’s an awful person who does whatever she wants no matter who it hurts! Sooner or later, she’s going to hurt you too!” 

“You don’t know her like I do, Beth,” Addy fumes. “You didn’t even give her a chance, you just decided she was a bad person the moment she showed up.” 

“I trusted my instincts and they were right,” Beth fires back. “Look at all the shady shit that’s happened since she got here.” 

“Half of it happened because you couldn’t keep her secret to yourself,” Addy hisses sharply. “But I’m not going to give up someone who loves me just because you can’t keep a lid on your jealousy.” 

“That can’t really be what you think is happening here,” Beth gasps, staring at Addy as though she’s sprouted a second head. 

“It is,” Addy mumbles, suddenly exhausted as if she’s fresh off furious rounds of drills. “It really is.” 

“Fine. You want to be free of me, Addy? That can be arranged.” 

Beth whips around and takes off like a greyhound on the track, lithe legs pumping all the way to her Jeep. She hops in and slams the door so hard her sunglasses (Addy’s sunglasses) fall down from her head and bounce once upon the bridge of her nose before crookedly sliding into place. She starts the engine and tears down the street, burning rubber in her wake. 

Once upon a time, Addy would’ve gone after her. But that’s a book that closed a long time ago, and it feels even longer than it actually was. Addy shuts the door, turns, presses to it with her back. 

She slowly slides down to the floor with the foul taste of dead feelings in her throat. Caitlin watches her, head tipped to the side and thumb popped in her tiny mouth. 

* * *

“You’re going to be great,” Coach tells her the night before the final game, parked in the lot of the abandoned factory, in the backseat of her car. 

She rubs her hand up and down Addy’s abs, stroking the divots and ridges of the whipcord muscle. Addy reclines, the back of her head resting against the window. There is a satisfaction in watching Coach admire her, admire the person she helped her to become. 

“I’m a little nervous,” Addy admits. “We’ve got a lot riding on this.” 

“That’s true, but as long as you don’t lose sight of that…” Coach’s hands slip higher up Addy’s body, snaking beneath her bra. “As long as you stay focused, you’re going to be just fine. More than fine. Incredible.” 

Addy blooms with warmth at the encouragement, breath hitching as Coach’s thumbs ghost over her nipples. 

“You’ll shine like a diamond, Addy,” Coach promises. “All long as everyone else plays their part, that is…” 

“Don’t worry about Beth,” Addy hums. “She’s Top Girl. She’d never leave us hanging.” 

“Are you sure?” Coach asks, pads of her thumbs skimming over Addy’s nipples in gentle circles. 

“Mm-hmm,” Addy glows hot under Coach’s touch. “Beth will be fine.” 

* * *

_Beth will be fine._

Addy believes it right up until the moment they’re in formation and Beth suddenly, violently yanks her wrist from Addy’s grasp. In this moment, Addy realizes exactly what it is that’s happening. 

She knows that there is no stopping her, there is never any stopping Beth once she has decided to do something. Addy tries anyway and RiRi does too, they stretch as hard and as high as they can, straining as Beth powerfully propels herself backwards, wobbling, teetering trying, trying, trying to prevent the inevitable. 

Addy is aware of falling, bodily smacking into RiRi as their bases give beneath them, her shoes slipping from Mindy’s shoulders. They go down like dominoes but Beth is the one with the farthest to fall and even as Addy’s own shins thwack to the gymnasium, she can’t tear her eyes from Beth’s far more dire descent. 

She’s soaring gracefully to the rafters right up until the split second she isn’t, gravity sucking her down to the unforgiving floor. She hits the lacquered hardwood headfirst and the grotesque, wet crack that cuts the air reminds Addy of the noises the rotten pumpkins at the orchard would make when she and Beth would kick them as children, destroying all the ones that hadn’t been picked to be Halloween jack-o-lanterns. 

Addy springs to her feet and scrambles over, Beth’s name tearing from her tongue like barbwire. 

The sight of Will dead has haunted Addy since the moment she saw it. The glistening cherry, pulpy mess of his toothless mouth. The glazed vacancy of his sunken eyes forever fixed upon that ceiling fan. It was the worst thing Addy had ever seen, the worst thing she had ever known, and she never imagined there could be anything worse. That notion becomes a cruel joke as soon as Addy reaches Beth. 

When Addy reaches Beth, she doesn’t just step in the blood, she slips in it. She crashes to her knees in the widening, wine dark puddle. It splashes nauseatingly warm against her skin. 

A deep gash unzips the flesh of Beth’s forehead and stretches all the way back into her scalp, moist raw meat lining the pale, marbled pink that Addy quickly realizes is her exposed skull. Blood gushes forth from the gash in an unstoppable geyser, tides into her hair, over the floor, pours down her face and into her eyes. One is closed and for a moment, a mere heartbeat the other is open, twitching up at Addy, almost like Beth is winking. Then it droops closed too. 

* * *

  
The entire squad packs into the dinky waiting room, sardines squished into vinyl-padded chairs. Coach sits beside Addy, their fingers intertwined. 

They normally can’t hold hands in public but right now, no one would think anything of it. Passersby would just assume that it’s a gesture of comfort as the minutes drag by and everyone’s stomach sinks lower, the anticipation of bad news hovering through the air like a rancid smell. In fact, RiRi sits on Coach’s opposite side and holds her hand too, squeezing Coach’s fingers and sniffling with teary eyes. 

Beth would hate it if she knew Addy and Coach were holding hands, but they can only hold hands because of what she did. There’s irony in there somewhere, but Addy doesn’t care to search for it now. 

At some point, Beth’s parents come barreling in. Lana’s face is a mess of runny mascara and Bert is stricken, looks like someone who just stuck a fork into a plugged-in toaster. They hurry off behind tall, swinging double-doors, directed by this chunky guy in green scrubs. Tacy tenses in the seat across from Addy, like she might hop up and follow them. 

Something holds her back. Probably Lana’s potential to lash out. She’s never had much of a tolerance for Tacy and with her own daughter critically injured,

(dying) 

she’s hardly 

(no) 

likely 

(yes) 

to 

(Beth won’t die like this) 

flash a big smile and pat her husband’s love child on the head. 

Addy’s own mother shows up not long after. Addy had texted her, of course. And at this point, what happened to Beth at the game is all over the local news. Even if Beth’s accident that really wasn’t an accident would give her cover, Addy still releases Coach’s hand as her mother approaches in that authoritative, police power walk of hers, gun on her hip. 

She looks Addy over with weary, wavering eyes and gently cups her cheek. 

“How about I take you home, huh?” she asks, quickly, voice on the verge of crumbling. “Get you cleaned up?” 

Addy looks down at herself, Beth’s blood crusting on her cheer skirt. Beth’s blood smudged tacky over her shins and soaked into her socks, into her cheer shoes. She’ll have to bleach them. Again. 

“No,” she says, turning away from her mother’s touch and gulping past the knot in her throat. “I need to stay until Beth gets out of surgery, at least.” 

Her mother draws her hand back, glancing down to Addy’s bloodied legs and giving a small shake of the head. Addy knows she’s in for an argument when Coach suddenly pats her knee. 

“Hey, I’ve got a change of clothes in the car,” she says, looking up to Faith, voice colored with fluff, like it always is when Coach talks to parents. “I’d be happy to let Addy borrow them, if that’s okay with you.” 

There’s a pause and then Faith exhales, nodding her head. “That’d be fine, thank you.” 

“Okay.” Coach stands up, hand slipping out of RiRi’s grip on her opposite side. “Let’s go, Addy.” 

Addy hesitates. She doesn’t really want to get up, just in case someone comes back with news about Beth. She was hoping Coach would just bring the change of clothes to her. But then, she supposes she’d have to get up when it got to changing them anyway. She couldn’t exactly strip down in the middle of this public waiting room. 

So she stands up, follows Coach out the door and into the parking lot on numb legs. Glitter peeks out between the swatches of blood. Glitter and sequins left from the beautification process before the game. 

“I should probably sit next to my mom when we go back inside,” Addy says quietly. 

“Probably,” Coach agrees, unlocking her trunk. 

The lid pops up to reveal a suitcase inside, the same one she’d meticulously packed for regionals. Coach unzips it and pulls out this cream turtleneck, a pair of straight-leg black jeans, and a pair of soft, periwinkle socks. 

“Wait, why do you have a suitcase in your car?” Addy asks, frowning dubiously as the clothes are placed in her hand. 

Coach pulls out something else, a small packet of wet baby wipes. “And these, to clean off a bit with.” 

“Coach,” Addy prompts, pitch heightening with anxiety. “Why is there a suitcase in your car? Are you leaving?” 

_Are you leaving me?_

“Shh, Addy.” Coach leans in, breath tickling against the shell of her ear. “This was all precautionary. Just in case suspicion fell on me about Will. Thankfully that hasn’t happened yet. And I see no reason why it would now, we were very careful…” 

“Right, careful.” Addy swallows. 

“Unless you know something I don’t?” Coach asks, stepping back and raising a brow. 

“N-No, we’re good,” Addy says, struggling to focus when she’s brutally aware of Beth right now, skull split open on some operating table. “I mean, Beth said a couple things to Kurtz, but—“ 

“Excuse me!?” Coach squawks, eyes widening. “Why didn’t you say anything before?” 

“Let me finish,” Addy says, shifting the bundle of clothes under her armpit and waving her hands placatingly. “Beth had Kurtz tell me he saw you that night, but really, Coach, she probably just made him lie and all that was before I knew she sent the video, anyway. Since Beth sent the video, there’s no way she wanted Kurtz to go to the cops. She was trying to scare me. Trying to come between us, like she always did.” 

The alarm trickles out of Coach’s expression and she thoughtfully bobs her head. 

“Even if he wasn’t lying, Kurtz is no threat to me. He wouldn’t step within a hundred feet of a police station, not with his track record.” 

“Track record?” 

“Battery, squatting, raping underage girls.” After a beat, something passes over Coach’s face. “Actually raping them, Addy. Not like how things are with us. We’re different, we’re special.” 

She reaches out and ghosts a touch over Addy’s hand. 

“Of course we are, but— but Kurtz,” Addy stammers, “He didn’t rape Beth. She told me nothing happened.” 

“Oh, Addy,” Coach rebukes, practically dumbstruck. “You believed her? Jesus, Beth couldn’t even stand up that night. She certainly couldn’t have said ‘yes’ to anything.” 

“I mean, yeah, she was crazy fucked up but she said nothing happened, so she must’ve got fucked up after…” 

Coach dismissively flaps her hand. “She was probably trying to save face, Addy. She wasn’t Kurtz’s first victim, Will told me to stay as far away from that slimy bastard as I could, he’s done unspeakable things. Frankly, I’m disturbed they let him recruit right at the school.” 

Addy’s gut twists and contorts in all kinds of revolting ways. She thinks back to their fight at the playground, the one that got physical. The words she spat at Beth sear through her blood like venom. 

_“You don’t get to do this. You can’t talk shit about me and Coach, not after you screwed Kurtz.”_

Addy’s eyes burn hot as her stomach knots cold and she climbs into the backseat of Coach’s car without another word. 

Beth got raped and Addy hurled it back in her face. Beth got raped and Addy shoved it down her throat, made her choke on it. 

_The way Kurtz made her choke on his dick?_ Addy wonders, the ghastly possibility crushing the breath out of her. 

Addy undresses robotically. She takes a moist wipe from the package and scrubs it up and down her legs. Beth’s blood becomes wet again, smearing onto the clean white fabric. 

This is when everything catches up with her and Addy viscerally falls apart in the same car seats she’d climaxed in just the night before. Great, gulping sobs tear themselves from her body, shoulders quaking from the force of them. The tears flood over her cheeks, cutting tracks through the carefully applied golden glitz. 

She puts Coach’s clothes on through watery, blurry eyes, rendering it no surprise when she gets out of the car and Coach informs her she’s put the turtleneck on backwards. Addy doesn’t bother to fix it. Coach wipes the tears from her cheeks and they walk back into the hospital together. 

Bert and Lana have joined the squad in the waiting room. Lana is hunched so far forward in her chair, the ends of her hair tickle the yellowed tile floor. Faith sits in the chair next to hers, rubbing her back while she sobs, lips thinned. Bert paces back and forth, eyes glassy, hand cupped over his mouth. But when he notices Coach, he breaks his stride and seems to flicker across the gap between them. 

“You!” he snarls, jabbing a finger at Coach like she’s some disobedient dog that just crapped on the floor. “This is all on you! You were supposed to be the best of best, and you failed spectacularly in every way!” 

Coach inhales sharply and Bert presses on. 

“I’m going call my lawyer and sue you so fast, it’ll make your head spin! You let this happen to my daughter, you can damn well pay her medical bills!” 

Addy darts forward, stepping defensively in front of Coach. 

“Beth jumped too soon on purpose!” she snaps up at him, shrill and frantic. “I watched her do it, I felt her do it, I felt her rip herself right out of my hands! Your daughter was suicidal and you didn’t even notice! Maybe you should think about that before you try blaming somebody else!” 

Bert gapes at her, utterly stupefied. Tacy bounces up from her chair, bunny rabbit eyes glaring daggers. 

“What about you, Addy? You’re supposed to be her best friend,” Tacy challenges from behind the safety of Bert’s back. “How come you didn’t notice? How come you didn’t stop her?” 

“It was too late,” Addy falters out, feeling something inside herself give way. 

‘The Abyss, Addy,’ Beth once said, foreboding, eyes swirling like storm clouds above the sea, ‘it gazes back into you.’ 

Addy thinks of the moment Beth tore her wrist from her hand, the moment Addy realized she was going to vault herself right into The Abyss and realizes that’s what happened. 

_The Abyss sank its teeth into her._

then, with a creeping coldness, she thinks, 

_No, I did._

* * *

A week since Beth’s surgery and she still hasn’t woken up. According to Lana, she might not wake up at all. It’s bad. 

It’s so, so bad. 

Several pieces of shattered cranium knifed directly into Beth’s brain. There had been fluid leaking out of her nose and ears, the kind that cushions the brain, and Addy hadn’t even noticed. Attention stolen by all the blood and the open meat of the horrific wound. 

According to Bert, fuck everything the doctors say, they just don’t know how what a fighter his baby girl is is. He says this as if he does, as if he has the faintest inkling, and the very idea of that makes Addy want to puke. 

* * *

Despite the prayers and the vigils, and the cutesy things people bring and stuff her hospital room full of, including this massive pink teddy bear Bert brings, as big as Addy herself, Beth still won’t wake up. She’s as comatose on the tenth day as she was the first day they officially used that word, the big ‘c.’

Addy goes to Beth after the official visiting hours are over, so she doesn’t have to sit through the squad’s crocodile tears or the Cassidy family’s dramatics. She slinks in as silent as a shadow and shuts the door behind her, approaching the bed with a heart encased in concrete. 

“Hey,” she whispers.

Beth predictably does not respond. She is pale and unmoving in the bed, eyelids shut. Layers upon layers of gauze wind around her head and Addy knows she’s bald beneath them. They had to buzz off every coconut conditioned lock of Beth’s lovely chestnut mane to try to put her broken crown back together. Pale blue, plastic tubing goes straight into her throat and irresistibly reminds Addy of the hose of the filter of the Slocum family’s blowup summer pool. 

One of her hands is stuck with more plastic pieces, leashed to a dripping pouch on a pole. Her other hand is free and that’s the hand Addy takes, squeezing it as she bends at the waist and gently kisses Beth on the mouth. The skin is cold and clammy beneath her lips but Addy kisses her again anyway, squeezes her hand tighter, painfully so, in this nonsensical effort to get her eyes to open. 

Beth doesn’t stir. Her hand is limp in Addy’s grasp and her lips don’t respond to Addy’s, don’t press back like she vainly wishes with all of her stupid, heavy, concrete heart they would. 

Maybe things would be different if this were a fairytale and Addy was a boy. 

Hell, maybe everything would be different if Addy was a boy. 

Addy wearily plops down in the giant pink bear at Beth’s bedside. Her butt sinks into the plushy pudge of its stomach. 

“Did you realize this would happen?” she asks, aching. “I know you did it on purpose. But is this where you expected to end up?” 

Addy leans back into the bear, glancing up to its stitched-on smile and black button eyes. The machines breathe for Beth, rhythmic and humming. Addy gazes around the room, at the overflowing cookie baskets and shiny get-well balloons. 

“I know you’re mad about Coach,” Addy goes on, anxiously rubbing her free hand through the pink fur of the bear’s arms. “You wanted me to pick you so bad…” 

She squeezes Beth’s hand again, so chilly, so eerily slack. 

“If things were different, maybe I could have,” she confesses in the quiet, eyes stinging with mist. “I love you both, but I loved you first. I’ve loved you for so long, sometimes I even imagine us getting married one day, going cross-country together and doing all this super sappy shit. But love isn’t always enough, Beth…even if Coach never showed up, we were doomed before we began. Didn’t your dreams tell you? Your witchy, nighttime prophecies?” 

Addy stares into Beth’s seemingly sleeping face and wonders if she’s dreaming right now. If she’s lost in dark, nightmare worlds of twisted symbolism. Trapped in an endless loop of terrifying things like shadow monsters and gnashing teeth. Or if for once in her life, she’s blissfully unaware. Floating through worlds like sugar sweet cereal milk, marshmallow stars shooting across pastel skies. 

But in an unfair, ugly kind of way, Addy hopes it’s the nightmares Beth is having. More motivation for her to wake up. Wake up and escape the horrible things haunting such dark dreams. Wake up and come back to life, back to Addy.

“I would always be too hungry— no, more than hungry. What does Coach call me?” Addy pauses, thoughtfully tapping her foot against the tile. “Ravenous, that’s it.” 

Addy finally lets go of Beth’s hand and swallows past the flurry of things that tangle in her throat.

“I would always be too ravenous. And you would always be too much.” 

Part of her is waiting for Beth to argue. To possibly even prove her wrong. There’s no sound but the hum of the machines, and maybe that is answer enough.   


* * *

Addy waits at the very end of her street, hidden under the cover of midnight. Coach’s last text said she was on her way. 

Addy hasn’t seen her since the night of Beth’s fall and it’s got her on edge. Well, that’s not exactly correct. She has seen Coach, but only at school, during curriculum and practice hours. Where they have to pretend to be nothing but mentor and pupil. When Addy can’t touch her or breathe her, or writhe beneath her. 

When Coach finally does pull up, Addy practically throws herself into the car. 

“Hey, stranger,” Coach greets, winking. 

“Hey.” Addy relaxes into the seat as Coach starts to drive. “I’ve missed you.” 

“I’ve missed you too,” Coach murmurs, reaching across the gear shift to pat Addy on the leg. “Sorry we couldn’t get together sooner, but Matt’s really been up my ass.” 

“I know,” Addy mutters, rolling her eyes. “Do you wanna talk about it?” 

Coach had explained a lot through text already. About how he’s so demanding of her time lately, short-tempered and needy.

“It’s exhausting,” Coach blurts, hand slipping from Addy’s leg. “He’s constantly nitpicking, interrogating me about every little thing. Things have been tough with him ever since what happened, and I mean, I understand it, Addy. I’m not unreasonable.” 

Her eyes dart to Addy as if seeking assurance and Addy quickly nods. 

“I thought he’d get better over time, but it feels like he’s just getting worse.” Coach snorts a frustrated sound and claps her fingers against the steering wheel. “He’s not like you, Addy. You always understood things with Will, even after we got together. Always sophisticated about it.” 

The praise does wonderful things for Addy’s beaten down morale. 

“Feelings are complicated,” she says softly. “Why would I judge you?” 

“You wouldn’t. You’d never.” Coach flashes her a brief, winner’s smile. “But Matt doesn’t see it that way. He’ll never forgive me for having an affair. Even after everything I’ve done for him— everything we’ve done for him. Cleaning up his mess.” 

Addy doesn’t quite see that part as a “we” effort, but swallows her misgivings so as not to set Coach off. They should make the most of the time they have together. But then something else trips her up a bit and she finds herself blurting, 

“Wait, I thought it was all for Caitlin. Right?” 

Coach pauses, glances to Addy then back to the road. 

“Well it was. Oh, of course it was,” Coach replies. “I don’t want Caitlin to grow up like either of us, without her dad, aching for one who’s not there. But he still benefits, Addy. Whatever the reason, I’m protecting him. He doesn’t need to jump down my throat every time the glasses come out of the dishwasher a little foggy, or every time I forget what he did with his stupid briefcase.” 

“That bad?” Addy crinkles her nose. “C’mon, Mr. Coach. Get the stick out your ass.” 

“That’s what I’m saying!” Coach scoffs, an embittered sound. “Whatever. How’s Beth?” 

“No change.” Addy deflates. 

Over two weeks and no new brain activity, no nothing, not even a twitch of her pinkie finger. 

“…I’m sorry.” Coach’s gaze somberly wraps Addy up, shrouds her in sympathy. 

“Don’t say it like that,” Addy pushes back with this uncomfortable feeling, like maggots wriggling beneath her skin. “Beth isn’t dead. It’s a coma. People wake up from comas all the time, old, wrinkly people, way weaker than she is. Beth’s life force is a fucking supernova. She’s gonna pull out of this any day now.” 

Surprise flickers across Coach’s face. Addy watches the bob of her graceful throat as she swallows. 

“You think so?” 

“I know so. I know Beth better than anyone.” Every cell in Addy rejects the possibility that this is how Beth dies. 

(but she wanted to die, didn’t she) 

“I hope you’re right, Addy.”

(Beth always does what she wants) 

“I know I’m right,” Addy insists, harsher than she intends. 

Coach pulls into the parking lot of the old pawn shop, yet another abandoned building in Sutton Grove. The upside to this place being a dismal ghost town is that it provides many places for her and Coach to go to where no one else will be. 

“On a lighter note, I got you a gift.” 

Addy blinks at her, bemused. 

Coach flashes her a mischievous smile. “It’s in the back. Consider it a token of my apology since we haven’t been able to get together lately.” 

Addy cranes her neck to see a small, fancy looking gift bag. Affection swells in Addy’s chest like a hot air balloon. She takes it and pulls out the delicate tissue paper, breath catching as she sees what’s inside. 

A pair of lace panties, sleek, red and sexy. They look like something a Victoria’s Secret model would wear, eye-catching but elegant. Addy reaches down to touch them and the lace is so soft, it feels like grazing her fingertips along a cherub’s downy wingspan.

“Oh, Coa— Colette. These are awesome!” 

“Sorry I couldn’t get you the matching bra. My bank account hasn’t fully recovered from the move yet.” 

This gift is far more extravagant than the hamsa bracelet on Coach’s wrist. Addy wets her lips. 

“You didn’t have to get me anything…”

“I wanted to. You’ve been through so much lately, Addy.” Coach reaches out and tenderly cups her cheek. “You deserve nice things. Besides, this is more of a gift for the both of us. I can’t wait to see you in these.” 

Desire twinkles devilishly in Coach’s eyes, and she strokes her hand down Addy’s neck, to her collarbone. Solar flares soar beneath her touch. 

“But for tonight,” she continues. “I don’t want to see you in anything.” 

Addy obliges and strips herself bare. 

* * *

When Addy walks through the door, Faith is sitting at the kitchen table, head bowed. That’s weird. Addy could’ve sworn she had a night shift. 

“Where have you been?” she asks without looking up, sounding more tired than accusatory. 

“Uh, me and RiRi went to a movie,” she answers, proud of her foresight, having tucked the panties into her hoodie pouch and thrown the gift bag into the garbage can outside. “Sorry, I had my phone off.” 

Her mother raises her head, blinks slowly at Addy with a glassy, wrung-out gaze. 

“Come here for a minute, Addy,” she says, thick like there’s glue in her throat, the chair beside her already pulled out and waiting for Addy to take a seat. “I need to tell you something that’s going to be hard to hear.” 

Everything about this is wrong, from her mother’s posture, to her mother’s voice, to the scene so starkly similar to the day when the school bus dropped her off and Faith had finally decided to fill Addy in on the little secret that her dad wasn’t coming back, that he probably hadn’t even planned to. 

“No,” Addy says, alarm spiking through her. 

“Addy…” 

“No,” Addy repeats, vigorously whipping her head back and forth. “I know what you’re about to say, but it’s not true. Whoever told you was lying. Th-they lied to you, okay? Some kind of sick joke.” 

“It’s not a joke, Addy,” she says, voice still glue thick, shoulders slumped in defeat. “I wish it was.” 

“It’s not true,” Addy says again, insistent. This strange, hiccuping noise jumps out of her that could be anything between a sob and a laugh. “I would’ve felt it, Mom, I would’ve felt her go.” 

She and Beth are so much more than best friends, so much more than lovers, than enemies, than captain and lieutenant. Sometimes they are even the same person, really, if it could be believed. Two halves of the same soul in different bodies, and that’s why can work the way they do, so close their hearts beat as one even when they’re screaming at each other. 

It’s beautiful, it’s terrifying, but most of all, it is undeniable. 

“I would’ve felt it, Mom, I would’ve felt it,” she’s blubbering suddenly, fat tears pouring down her cheeks as an invisible anaconda constricts her torso, choking every breath of oxygen from the bottom of her lungs. 

No fucking way. 

It’s not real. 

There’s no fucking way it’s true, there’s no fucking way that Beth is dead at sixteen, no fucking way that the vivacious tempest inside her is over just like that, no fucking way it happened while Addy was riding Coach’s face and felt only burning bliss, no kind of disturbance whatsoever. 

Addy crashes to the floor so hard it makes her teeth rattle, clawing at her chest as that anaconda squeezes impossibly tighter. 

Her mother springs up from the kitchen chair and dives to Addy’s side. She puts her arms around her and rocks her back and forth like she’s never done, ever. Not even when Addy took tumbles off her tricycle as a toddler. 

“I’m sorry, Addy, I’m so sorry.” She sounds close to crying herself. 

Addy wrests out of her embrace and sinks forward to smother her screams into the floor, fibers itching into her skin. 

* * *

Beth had what’s called a pulmonary embolism. It’s the thing that happens when a dislodged blot clot travels to the lungs and coma patients are more vulnerable to clots because their blood flow gets sluggish. This is what Addy is told. Being told how it happened doesn’t actually make it make sense though. 

Beth, dead? 

That doesn’t make sense at all. 

It doesn’t feel real, not even when Addy is at the funeral, donning this stiff black suit and tie that once belonged to her father, abandoned in this worn trunk in the basement with some other miscellaneous bits and clothes he hadn’t bothered to take with him. At first she’d tried on an old mourning dress of Faith’s, but in the mirror it just hadn’t looked right. 

“I look ugly,” she’d said. 

“You’re not wearing it to a beauty pageant,” her mother had replied wearily.

“Maybe I can borrow a suit from Michael.” 

“Why do you want to wear a suit?” 

“It’s my best friend’s funeral,” Addy had snapped back and if it meant anything she didn’t know what, because it wasn’t supposed to mean anything, it was just supposed to shut her mother down. 

“…let me check downstairs before you call up Michael.” 

Addy looked better in the suit than she’d looked in Faith’s dress. They washed the musty smell out of it with lavender detergent and had it tailored to her narrower shoulders and more feminine waistline. So here she is, in her long gone father’s suit at her freshly gone Beth’s funeral and not a single minute of it feels like the truth. 

Not even when Addy looks into the open casket and sees Beth in there. But then, it doesn’t help that she barely looks like the Beth Addy knew at all.

She’s dressed in this demure snowflake gown that a Sunday school child might wear to Confirmation. The kind of thing Beth would never be caught dead in. Except…

They’ve fitted her with a wig that resembles her last hairstyle but isn’t quite right when you look closely. The wig’s waves are just a little too wavy and it’s a slightly too dark shade of brunette. Her makeup is subtle and light, cheeks dusted in carnation pink and lips smoothed with rose. Nothing like the long, mascara thick lashes or the pop-out, glittery eyeshadow Beth would rock before a game. The foundation doesn’t do much to diminish the puckered scar in the middle of her forehead. 

Addy reaches in, hand hovering over Beth’s face. 

On some level she’s still waiting for Beth to grab her wrist and shout, “gotcha!” 

But then Addy touches the scar and her body jolts with the memory of the blood all over the gym. This is when she does feel it, really feel it— the absence of Beth. Dead flesh under the pads of her fingertips, the grim knowing of everything inside that had been Beth now vacant and gone. 

The rest of the funeral is this nondescript noise.

Addy doesn’t recall the eulogy though she does recall that Bert gave it and that probably means it wasn’t worth listening to anyway. She remembers the snap of finality when they closed the casket, the worst noise she had ever heard second only to the one that Beth’s head had made when it struck the gym. She remembers shuffling closer as they began to dump the dirt overtop its polished mahogany lid and how RiRi had grabbed her arm, yanking Addy back as though frightened Addy might jump in the grave too. 

* * *

The time in between the funeral and the moment Addy feels herself snap is a murky blur, like newsprint dropped in a mud puddle. Soggy paper, runny, ruined ink.

They put Beth in the ground in the evening and it’s definitely nighttime now as Addy runs all the way to Coach’s house, still dressed in her father’s black suit. The tie slips out of the lapel and slaps against her as she charges, pumping her legs, tears flying from her eyes. She’s sweating up a storm beneath the restrictive fabric, icy liquid sins slithering down her back. 

Her lungs feel like dried, crumbling sponges behind her ribs by the time she reaches Coach’s street. She can see Coach through the window, on the couch with a mug in her hand. Flying over the porch steps, she nearly crashes into the door but stops herself just in time. Then she’s pounding anguished fists against the door in a mad panic. 

Coach swings it open, gaping down at Addy in open dismay. 

“What are you doing?” she hisses. “Are you trying to wake up my husb—“ 

“Make it stop,” Addy begs her, sobbing now, the sheer grief and guilt and loss so much more than she can carry. These feelings are bigger than she is, all encompassing, her own personal abyss. The denial has ebbed away and unleashed everything that lurked beneath.

“It hurts so much, Coach, make it stop, make it stop,” she begs and begs, a broken record. “Make it stop, make it stop.” 

Swift as a rattlesnake, Coach grabs her wrist and pulls her inside. She shoves Addy against the wall so hard her head clicks back. Thrusting her forearm to Addy’s throat, Coach pins her in place. The pressure against her trachea so hard, she can only just shallowly wheeze for air. 

“Okay,” Coach promises, gaze dim with sympathy. “I’ll make it stop, Addy.” 

Coach’s forearm keeps her pinned as she fumbles Addy’s belt free and jams her hand into her pants. Her fingers move furiously, fine-tuned to Addy’s needs. It’s forceful and intense, Addy clenching her quivery thighs around Coach’s relentless incursion as she grows lightheaded. 

When her orgasm pours out of her, everything else pours out with it. The abyss spurts around Coach’s hand and between her legs, dampens the formal fabric of trousers. Coach takes her hand back and removes her arm from Addy’s throat. Addy coughs quietly, slumping as she clears her throbbing trachea.

“Better now?” 

In the wake of it, Addy is engulfed in emptiness. 

“Yeah…thanks.” 

“Today was very hard for you.” Coach wipes her hand off on her slate gray pajama bottoms and brushes her knuckle over the tear tracks dried on Addy’s cheek. “You can sleep on the couch, okay? Matt knows what happened and I can just tell him you needed a friend to get through the night.” 

“It’s not a lie,” Addy croaks. 

Coach’s lips twitch. “We can’t make this a habit, though. You know how belligerent he’s been lately…” 

* * *

  
Addy makes sure she’s back in the house before her mother wakes up. Changes out of Coach’s borrowed pajamas and into a set of her own to help sell the impression that she was here all night. 

Her mother gives Addy the option of skipping the next two days of school following Beth’s funeral. A rare offer from stern Officer Hanlon. But Addy declines. She needs something to distract herself, because the emptiness didn’t last. When she woke up in the morning, the loss was waiting for her. 

Grief puts a drag in her step. Guilt gives a sour taste that clings to the back of her throat like cheap gas station liquor. Addy drifts through her classes in a daze. Everybody is whispering about Beth. 

The whispers had begun weeks ago, after her initial suicide attempt. But now that her attempt has accumulated to a belated success, they’re back in full force. The other students stare at Addy like she might hold the secrets to the whole thing. 

Well, perhaps she does. And if she does, they will remain tucked away in the chambers of her broken heart. She will never speak them to anyone. They are not for anyone else to know. 

Beth’s locker is a collage of decorations, a memorial of crying emoji stickers, doodled crucifixes, and paper cranes plastered up by people who were probably afraid of her. People who couldn’t even be bothered to check whether her full name was Bethany or Elizabeth before putting up their hollow sentiments and crappy poetry scrawled on sticky notes. 

Addy wants to rip them down and use them as toilet paper. She doesn’t think Beth would be offended. At least, not in earnest. Her ghost would probably flip Addy the middle finger in mock offense and then crack a grin before cackling hysterically.

* * *

  
Cheer practice starts out okay. 

Addy tries to focus on her performance. Tumblers and back tucks. Playing base for basic thigh stands just to get warmed up. 

Then the conversation comes to who should be Top Girl. 

“I think it should be me, Coach,” Tacy warbles, determination written into her fluffy face. “Beth was my sister. It should be my job to carry on her legacy.” 

It must be stupidest fucking thing Addy has ever heard. Her blood boils and she just goes berserk. Suddenly her hand has closed around Tacy’s ponytail and she whips her with a violent force, sending her stumbling toward the wall. 

“H-Hey!” she squawks out. 

Addy surges forward and pins Tacy to the painted brick the same way Coach pinned her after the funeral, forearm smashed against her throat. Tacy squirms, clawing frantically at Addy’s wrists. Her skin scrapes off under Tacy’s blossom pink fingernails, but the stinging only encourages rather than deters. 

“Don’t you dare pretend you cared about Beth,” Addy growls dangerously low. “Not ever. Not in front of me. Try to pull that shit in front of my face again and I will fucking kill you.” 

Tacy’s eyes widen until the whites are visible all around, squeaking out this pitiful mouse sound. 

“Hanlon! Enough!” Coach commands behind her. 

Addy obediently releases her, stepping back. Tacy doubles over in a coughing fit that’s surely exaggerated for dramatic effect. Like everything else she does. 

She turns around and the other girls are all staring at her as if they’re seeing her for the very first time. Frightened. Like they're staring at Beth herself.

“Let’s wrap things up early today,” Coach declares. “Yesterday was a tough day for the whole squad and I shouldn’t have expected you to be ready so soon.” 

Uneasy murmurs ripple through everyone and they disperse to the showers. Except for Addy. 

“My office, Hanlon,” Coach demands with an edge of ice so that everyone else will presume Addy is in trouble. 

Things change as soon as the door is closed. 

“Damn,” Coach says, mildly awed. “I feel like I just watched a fox eat a rabbit.” 

This sounds exactly like the kind of thing Beth would say and it brings on a tide of grief that threatens to knock Addy over. Her legs wobble and she leans into Coach for support. 

“Whoa, Addy, you okay?” Coach’s hands grip her firmly, steadying. 

“I don’t know,” Addy whispers, low and dark, tucking herself in the hold. “Everything is different now.” 

“Oh, Addy.” Coach breathes a sigh into her hair. “I know. I wish I could change it.” 

“Can you make it stop again?” Addy pleads. 

“No,” Coach hums apologetically. “Not now, Addy. Too risky right now.” 

She begins to pull away and Addy curls her hands into her shirt, clinging. “Then can I come over tonight? Please, Coach, it hurts so bad. Or if I can’t come over, maybe we could go—“ 

She cuts herself off, watching Coach shake her head. 

“I’m sorry, Addy. I want to, but Matt is honestly impossible right now.” She sighs heavily and slips out of Addy’s grasp, sitting on the edge of her desk. “I caught him going through my phone this morning.” 

Addy stiffens. 

“Don’t worry, he didn’t see our texts. Luckily, that app is less conspicuous than the one me and Will were using.” 

Addy is relieved. She doesn’t think she could handle that on top of everything else. Accidentally or not, Matt shot the last person Coach had an affair with in the face. Addy doesn’t want to have to worry about being the next person on his radar. 

“He’s really being a dick lately, huh?” 

“Honestly,” Coach huffs, smacking her hands against her desktop. “Yells about every little thing. And drives by the house on his lunch break, like he’s checking up on me. He even snapped at Caitlin the other night, and ooh, I was pissed!” 

“She’s a baby, what the heck could she do?” Addy asks, frowning. 

“Chew on his phone charger.” Coach rolls her eyes. “All he had to do was take it away from her and wipe it off.” 

“Yeah,” Addy agrees, some of her sorrows ebbing away as she pictures Caitlin’s adorably round face. “It’s not like she knows any better.” 

“Right? Jesus, that man.” She shakes her head, then her mouth quirks in this wistful half-smile. “You’re only sixteen and you’re more mature than my thirty-three year old husband. Better in bed, too.” 

The praise washes through Addy as sweet and soothing as hot cocoa on a bitter winter day. On the day after Beth’s funeral, the bitterest day she’s ever slogged through, Addy clings to this feeling like a lifeline. 

“If you still want to see me in those panties, it’s not too late to change your mind,” she chimes, tugging the waist of her exercise pants low enough to give Coach a ruby red peek. 

Coach’s eyes glow with interest, tongue languidly sliding over her lips. But the phone on her desk vibrates and dispels the moment before it can go any further. 

“Soon,” Coach promises. “Not today, but soon.” 

Addy swallows her disappointment and tugs her pants back up. 

“Do you want to talk about what happened with Tacy?” Coach tilts her head, expression sobering. 

And just like that, Addy is plunged back into the world of loss and the miserable things she is housing, things devouring her from the inside out like a disease.   
  
“She never gave a single shit about Beth. I’m not going to stand there and listen to her act like she did just to get people to roll over for her.” 

“You made that very clear,” Coach says quietly. “I don’t think she’ll make that mistake twice.” 

Addy thinks of the way her forearm felt against Tacy’s throat. Skin warm, windpipe knobby. She suddenly feels very weak. 

“I think you need a little something to take the edge off today,” Coach says, reaching around to the drawer of her desk. She pulls it open, grabs a flask, and passes it to Addy. 

Addy takes a curious sip, realizes it’s gin. She empties the flask before she leaves Coach’s office and Coach does not stop her. 

* * *

  
As far back as Addy can remember, Beth has always been there.

Beth has been there since the moment she clamped her big shark mouth onto Addy’s wrist in pre-school, which had been her way of claiming Addy as her own. Addy had cried and cried, but then Beth coaxed her to calmness with animal crackers and apple juice. They had been together through everything since. B-E-T-H had been the first thing Addy learned to write after her own name.

They grew up alongside each other, conquering the good days and holding each other through the bad days. The days where Addy would realize she couldn’t remember her own father’s face and snivel pathetically for hours and hours after the fact. The days where Lana would rage endlessly about Bert’s infidelity, high as a kite and throwing things everywhere, things that sometimes even struck Beth, like this paperweight that knocked out a baby tooth luckily already loose. 

When Addy reflects on her memories, more of them are with Beth than without. Beth was always there. It was always them. 

Even when Addy was furious with her— for being too possessive, for the way things exploded last summer, fed up of all her fucking riddles, Beth trying to force things out of her that she just couldn’t give, Beth carelessly basking in her complacent glory of being Top Girl and blowing off Addy’s ambition to be better, Beth trying to poison Addy against her beloved Coach, scaring Addy into submission— through every wretched second of it, Addy still absently assumed that Beth would always be there to return to someday, when the inferno that blazed between them smoldered down to mere ashes. 

There was always the sense that Beth would be there to go back to, and things would resume as normal. Beth and Addy. Captain and Lieutenant. As livid as she was, Addy automatically felt that one day she’d be over it, all the rage and the strife. Because that’s just how she and Beth worked. As a set. If they broke apart, inevitably, they would come back together. Two halves of the same fractured bone encased under a fiberglass fitting. 

And the most bizarre thing is, Addy didn’t even realize just how much she felt that way until Beth was gone. 

How much she still wanted Beth to be there, at the end of the day. How much she still wanted Beth to be. 

Beth is dead. Fucking dead and buried, in the ground, no way for Addy to resurrect her. 

There isn’t going to be any kind of reconciliation where they’ll snark and snipe their way through indirect apologies. Where they’ll wordlessly partner up in the gym and stretch each other’s bodies to burning oblivion, the silent understanding between them; _we hurt each other, but this pain has a purpose, it makes us stronger. Stretches always hurt before they strengthen._

Addy will never again hear Beth’s laugh, neither the gentle, honeyed laughs of her effervescent happiness, nor the barbaric hyena laugh she’d bark at JV fetuses who needed to learn their place. She will never again run the streets with Beth on chilly winter mornings, watching her breath puff into the air like white smoke. She will never again

(kiss Beth’s lips) 

hold Beth’s cheer shoe in her hand and hoist her up to the sky, or drive around town in her Jeep, blasting the music so loud their ears might bleed, or talk to her about anything and everything on her bed in the eeriest, earliest hours of the morning, speaking a language that’s all their own. 

Beth is dead and something intrinsic has broken inside Addy, something that can never be repaired. 

She doesn’t remember slipping out her own house or the subsequent walk to Beth’s house, though it must’ve happened, because that’s where she is now. Her memory is a funny thing these days, or perhaps it always was. Beth seemed to think so. Addy feels like she must’ve been on autopilot, feet finding their way down the most familiar path. 

She opens the fake rock with the wise old man face etched into it and plucks the spare key out. She unlocks the front door and steps inside, peering around in the dark. The moonlight that shines in through the windows reveals empty wineglasses, powder scattered across the table, and most pressing, a body on the couch. 

For one terrifyingly hope fraught heartbeat, Addy thinks it’s Beth. It isn’t, of course. Only her mind playing tricks on her. It’s Lana out cold there, hair fanned over her face and comforter tangled between her ankles. 

Addy holds her breath and pads quietly across the carpet. She creeps up the stairs, into Beth’s bedroom. It looks the same. Kinda messy, a little cluttered. Bong on the dresser, headphones on the floor. Closet door cracked open. 

Bed unmade. 

It doesn’t seem empty or forlorn. It seems like Beth left for a just a little while, maybe off at cheer camp, and that the room is waiting for her to return. Like her stuff is still hers and eventually she’ll come back to it, clean everything up a bit, and then make it even messier. 

_I don’t know why I came here,_ Addy thinks. 

_Yes you do,_ she thinks next, this thought in Beth’s voice so clear it chills her. _You always know more than you let on._

Addy swallows and toes off her shoes. She strips down to her underwear, the lacy red panties Coach bought her and reaches into Beth’s closet, the door creaking softly as she opens it wider. Addy’s heart hammers, as if this tiny sound will wake Lana all the way downstairs and send her stomping up her to rip Addy a new one. She pulls one of Beth’s t-shirts from a hanger and holds it to the window to identify which one. 

Ah, this one. ‘LIVE IN THE MOMENT’ printed in all caps overtop the glittery graphic of a pale woman’s mouth with her deep red lips parted, almost as if she’s speaking the caption. Addy puts it on, exhaling slowly as the soft fabric brushes her skin. She thinks of Beth wearing this shirt as she danced on the counter in the kitchen, its hem creeping up higher and higher as she fanned her fingers over her gorgeous, rock-hard abs and winked down at Addy beholding her like a goddess from below. 

Then she’d stretched out her hand and Addy took it, hopping up there with her. RiRi cranked the music louder and Addy held onto Beth’s hips and swayed and shimmied the whole rest of the night. 

She crawls into Beth’s bed and buries her face in the pillow. It still smells like Beth, her coconut shampoo and tropical body mist, the strawberry-lemonade flavor of her marijuana vape. The scent crams Addy full of something so overwhelming it turns her bones to putty, and her eyes are burning hot and she inexorably thinks back to the overpowering bleach smell in Will’s apartment that also burned her eyes. She wants to fucking scream. 

She shoves her hand down her panties instead. She rubs herself slick and presses her face even harder into Beth’s pillow, so hard Beth’s scent is smothering her, so hard she can barely breathe and her teeth ache, and the sobs get choked inside her chest. She slips her fingers inside and squeezes her thighs together, suddenly, viciously hating herself. 

Beth’s familiar scent surrounding her, Beth’s familiar sheets under her skin, Addy works herself to climax and hates herself dearly, and fucking sobs and sobs and sobs as if the world is going to end. As if it hadn’t ended already. 

She cries like Coach did their first night together after Will, when Addy comforted her but then the comfort turned carnal, and that too became a kind of comfort in itself. Even though it wasn’t all that comforting when Coach’s hand clamped over her mouth, tears falling from her cheeks down to Addy’s, almost as if they were Addy’s tears too. 

God, would Beth hate the shit out of Addy if she knew Addy were thinking of Coach in her very own bed. Even more than she hated Addy for giving her the hamsa, probably. But even so, Addy doesn’t think Beth could hate her quite as much as she hates herself, hates and hates with her whole entire hideous heart as she lies in her dead best friend’s bed, her dead best friend’s sheets damp between her legs.

Addy is too exhausted to move. She sobs herself to sleep, some foolish, childish part of her hatefully hoping that in the morning, she’ll wake up and find that these past four months have been nothing but a bad dream. She’ll wake up and Beth will be beside her, vibrantly alive and even annoying, poking Addy in the cheek as she teases her for drooling on the pillow, once again. 

* * *

Addy blinks bleary eyes open, groggy and unsure what woke her up. 

“Those undies look mighty mature for a girl your age.” 

Addy snaps upright, twisting her head to see Lana standing at the entrance of Beth’s bedroom, hip leaning against the door frame. She looks down at herself, wearing nothing but Beth’s t-shirt and Coach’s red, lacy gift. She gulps and flings herself out of bed, snatching up the wrinkled pile of her yoga pants. 

“I’m sorry,” she squawks out. “I’m so sorry, Miss Cassidy.” 

Lana takes a sip straight from the bottle of vodka in her hand and calmly watches Addy as she hurries to hike her pants up. She crams her feet into her shoes and darts for the door, but Lana does not step aside. 

“Leaving so soon? With my Bethy’s shirt?” 

Addy stops short, unsure what to do. She can’t just pull it off in front of Lana, she’s not wearing a bra underneath. Her bra is still on Beth’s floor, with her own shirt, both of which forgotten in her frenzy. 

“You can have it,” Lana continues. “You can have all of her clothes, Addy-Faddy. I’d rather you take them than Bert’s devil spawn with the cunt across the street.” 

Addy doesn’t want a single stitch of Beth’s clothing, doesn’t want to sweat in them until Beth’s scent grows stale and her own possess every fiber. Addy wants all of Beth’s clothing, so badly, down to the very last cotton sock. 

Which is the truth and which is the lie? 

“Mr. Cassidy wants to give Tacy Beth’s clothes?” 

“Yep.” Lana swills some more vodka. Addy watches a strand of her saliva thin and snap when she removes her mouth from the bottle. “Guess it shouldn’t have surprised me. He gave that little brat the life that should’ve belonged to Bethy, after all. Why wouldn’t he give her everything else that belonged to her, too?” 

“I’m sorry,” Addy says because she doesn’t know what else to say and it’s true too, so true, she doesn’t think she’s ever been more sorry about anything in her life. 

“Why don’t you stay for awhile?” Lana offers. “Sure I won’t be seeing much of you anymore.” 

“…okay,” Addy tentatively agrees. 

Lana slips back from the doorway and Addy follows her downstairs. They sit down on the couch and Lana rolls up a crisp green bill, snorting some of the powder off the tabletop. 

“Want to do a line, Addy-Faddy?” 

Addy balks, tongue-tied. 

“Aw, just joshing you.” Lana playfully pushes at her shoulder. “You mother would have my head on platter.” 

Addy grimaces and forces out a stilted laugh. 

“How is your mother these days?”

“Fine, I guess.” Addy shrugs. 

“She must be a very busy lady. Only competent cop at the station, if you ask me,” Lana scoffs. “Rest of ‘em just twiddle their thumbs and stuff their faces with doughnuts. Couldn’t solve a real crime if it bit ‘em in the ass, but pull you over for going a mile over the speed limit.” 

“She, uh, she does work hard,” Addy says, bobbing her head. 

“Don’t I know it. Lord knows what Faith Hanlon thinks of me, but I admire that about her. The dedication. I see it in you too, Addy.” 

“That’s funny,” Addy looks down at Beth’s shirt and idly picks at some rhinestone flecks. “My mom doesn’t think I’m like her at all. She says I’m more like my dad.” 

“Is that so?” Lana hums. She takes another drink and finally sets the bottle down on the tabletop. “Tell me something, Addy.” 

“Sure.” 

“Did you break my baby’s heart?” She stares hard at Addy with pinprick pupils. 

_You broke it first,_ Addy thinks, _You broke it way before I ever had a chance to, before I even knew what was happening._

“Yes,” she admits aloud, grief gobbling up her guts like some starved carnivore. 

“Had a feeling it was you,” Lana replies, lips twisting downward. 

_It was always you,_ Beth’s voice floats in her mind, curling around her brain like vapor. 

Addy braces herself to be yelled at. For Lana to slap her even, maybe, the grief-stricken mother she is. 

Instead, Lana simply picks up the remote and turns the television on. They watch this reality show about people who get attacked by animals and survive. This one idiot asshole brought it on himself, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. He stood on his cabin’s back porch and fed the bears straight from his hand. 

When Lana gets up to use the bathroom, Addy pinches the rolled bill between her fingers and snorts a line after all. Whatever it is— coke or crank, or crushed up Ritalin —sparkles through her synapses and kicks her heart rate up into wild hare overdrive. 

She’s not sure which part of this story feels more familiar. The moronic man tempting fate with the steak in his hand, or the grizzly bear shredding his arm to ribbons.

* * *

Sometimes when you’re with someone so long, you don’t really know who you are without them. 

You only realize it once they’re gone for good. Not simply distanced by some fight or lengthy vacation, but actually fucking gone, eternally out of your reach.

* * *

  
Addy starts the morning with dollar store wine and a nostril full of white powder she lifted off Lana after the older women inevitably passed out.

The high keeps other, heavier things at bay. Sprints through her veins, dribbles her heart like a basketball, her rib cage now the court. Energy courses through her in staccato currents. She’s hyper alert, hyper aware. 

Maybe that’s why when she gets to school and sees Kurtz at the recruitment table, she notices the way he cranes his neck when Brianna struts down the hall in her thigh-high boots. Notices the way his shifty eyes devour the stripes of skin between the tops of the boots and the hem of her skirt. 

Maybe it’s the hyper awareness the drug gifts her with. Or maybe she sees it because Beth is no longer here to see it in her place. 

Beth always told Addy she chose what to look at. Addy supposes on some level, she’d known it was true. How her stare deliberately missed things she didn’t want to see. In the past she could afford to miss things, because Beth saw all of it, every unpleasant thing Addy couldn’t bear to look at. 

Beth isn’t here anymore. Addy cannot rely on eyes that aren’t and so finally, finally she sees. But maybe the realization itself is the gift of the drugs. 

She is also vehemently aware of the backpack slung over its shoulders. Its weight. 

Hardcover algebra textbook, 275 pages. Hardcover English textbook, 350 pages. Hardcover science textbook, 400 pages. Heavy, solid books. With the other miscellaneous things in there, her backpack must add up to about twenty pounds in total. 

Addy slips it down from her shoulders, gripping one strap tightly in her fist. Maybe it’s the dope that propels her forward. Maybe it’s just her anger— helpless, useless, bitter anger of all the things she cannot change.

Addy rushes forward and leaps like a leopard, swinging her backpack forward with all the power she possesses. 

It solidly smashes into Kurtz’s face. Addy can feel something give beneath the blow and he’s stumbling backward, stunned. 

“You’re a rapist!” she’s suddenly screaming, surprising herself when she feels her throat sear under the thunder of her voice. “You’re a rapist! You’re a fucking rapist!” 

Addy’s already swinging her bag forward again, cracks Kurtz upside the head before he can right himself. She’s a hurricane of adrenaline and she doesn’t even know how, but she is and she’s going to hit him again, she’s going to hit him and hit him, and hit him until— 

“Stop!” arms lock around her waist, dragging her backward. “Addy, what are you doing?” 

Micheal. 

“Get off me, Slocum!” Addy flails in his grasp, her elbow jabbing back into his ribs hard enough to make him gasp, and she’s so wild, so scattered, she’s not sure if it’s an accident or on purpose. 

His grip loosens but doesn’t break. Micheal’s strong, star quarterback strong. Kurtz is bent in half, hand cupped over his face. Blood trickles down beneath it, a thin rivulet. Tibbs tries to help him but Kurtz waves him off as one droplet breaks from his chin and plashes mutely to the floor. 

There’s a crowd around them now, students gawking. Voyeuristic vultures in the wings, waiting to feast on the carrion of whatever happens next. Addy continues flailing tirelessly, heavy backpack a pendulum at the end of her pinwheeling arm. Michael does not relent, grunting with the effort of keeping his hold. 

Kurtz straightens, hands falling from his face. He stares down at the blood in his palm and Addy feels a rush of satisfaction as she continues to watch it leak from his nostrils in twin steams. 

“Crazy little bitch broke my nose,” Kurtz curses, flashing Addy a glare of pure hatred. 

“Corporal,” Tibbs reproaches, warily glancing at the gathered students. 

Shocked murmurs ripple through the throng. Then the principal’s voice cuts above it all. 

“My office now, Miss Hanlon!” 

* * *

It’s the first time Addy’s ever climbed into this cop car and actually felt as though she's being arrested. 

She’s suspended for not one, but two weeks? 

Officer Hanlon must be pissed. 

But when Addy actually dares steal a glance at her mom’s face, she doesn’t look pissed. Concern swims in her deep brown eyes and lines the edges of her frowning lips. Addy swallows and looks away. 

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” 

“The school already did…” 

“Did that recruiter do something to you? Did he put that bruise on your neck?” 

“N-No.” Addy’s fingers fly to her throat, nervously rubbing the mark from the night at Coach’s house. She thought it had went unnoticed. “This was just a mishap at practice.”

Her mom stares at her skeptically, eyes boring holes into her head. 

“Addy, if that marine hurt you, I will march into that school and cuff him right now.” 

“He didn’t! I just told you, it was cheer practice.” 

“The school told me you called him a rapist. Repeatedly.” 

Addy swallows again, digs her nails into the heels of her hands, knee bouncing with the cadence of her somewhat waning high. 

“Adelaide, look at me and explain to me what just happened in that building,” her mom commands, pitch rising with distress. “If someone hurt you, I need to know!” 

“He didn’t,” Addy answers, feeling like someone shoveled sand in her mouth. “Kurtz never touched me. I went off ‘cause I-I— I’m pretty sure he raped Beth.” 

Faith’s eyes widen and Addy keeps going, more honest with her than she’s been in months. 

“Remember back when we talked about the boy who cried wolf? I didn’t think it happened then. And now that I do, it doesn’t matter anyway, because Beth is gone.” 

Faith is quiet for a moment. He eyes briefly flicker away from Addy before refocusing. 

“Do you think that’s why she jumped?” she asks hollowly. 

Addy can’t speak. She bows forward and knits her fingers together behind her head, staring down at her bouncy knee. 

Her mother doesn’t press the matter. She starts the car with a heavy sigh and the whole way home Addy just stares down at her jittery knee, consumed by the ever-present vortex of loss, grief, and guilt, guilt, guilt.

* * *

  
Being suspended is actually the best thing that’s happened to Addy in weeks. 

Addy gets to spend more time with Coach. After Matt leaves for work and before Coach has to go to it, they have several solid hours to spend together. And when Coach does leave for work, she doesn’t take Caitlin to daycare. Addy gets to stay and babysit. 

Addy’s pretty sure they’re all that’s getting her through her upside down life right now. Coach with her loving embrace and luscious mouth, her almost hypnotic ways of soothing Addy when she’s spiraling into despair. Caitlin, who is marshmallow soft with pure innocence and full of wonder, who laughs like birthday cake and pats Addy’s face with adoring hands. 

They are a reprieve from everything else. 

One day, as Addy steps over the threshold barely a heartbeat after Matt French’s car leaves the street, Coach has an idea. 

“Let’s get out of here.” 

“Lanvers?” 

“No, Addy.” Coach rolls her eyes and playfully pinches her ear. “Think a little bigger. Let’s get out of Sutton Grove for the day. We’ve got some extra time, remember? I don’t have to be at practice today, 'cause they're having that faculty thing in the gym.” 

Getting out of Sutton Grove sounds like the best thing in world right now. 

“I’m in,” Addy agrees hastily. “Where do you wanna go?” 

“I was thinking Great Lakes Crossing. Little over an hour away, so we’re not going to run into anyone we know. There probably won’t be many people since it’s a weekday and we could take Caitlin to the aquarium.” 

“Sounds perfect.” 

Coach sweetly pecks her on the mouth, Addy’s lips tickling. She helps Coach get Caitlin ready. There’s an odd kind of solace in the domestic simplicity of it all. Of packing up those nasty yogurt puffs and filling sippy cups with grape juice. Of playfully arguing with Coach about whether or not Caitlin should wear the yellow shirt with the duckling leggings, or the green shirt with the froggy leggings. Compromising on the blue shirt and the shimmering, mermaid scale leggings, because that makes most sense if they’re going to the aquarium, duh.

Aren’t they just the dumbest bitches for not picking that outfit first? 

It’s not like Addy could always thrive on this simplicity. Coach couldn’t either. Coach may be a mother, but she’s not one of those Moms™ who could ever be content baking cookies for school fundraisers in baggy aprons, devoting her life to PTA meetings and folding laundry in neat as a pin, wrinkle-less stacks. One of the reasons she’s struggling with Matt fucking French is because that’s who he wants her to be, the stupid asshole. 

Addy needs challenges in her life. She needs to run and run until her legs give way like limp noodles. She needs to do back tuck after back tuck, until the soles of her sneakers are battered from repetitive smacking against the lacquered floor. She wants to be all that Coach believes she can, and her drive is how she gets there. Addy needs the thrills to thrum through her blood, the endorphins are what keeps her alive. 

But lately life has been a catastrophe of the most gutting kind, and slowing down like this for a minute, being able to poke fun at Coach and pretend that whatever Caitlin wears is something that matters at all is…it’s just nice. 

A nice, simple distraction that shaves some of the weight from her burdened shoulders and sleepless eyes. 

When they’re out on the road and Sutton Grove’s in the rearview mirror, Addy feels an even greater sense of relief. It’s like they’re leaving all their problems behind. Every tragic disaster abandoned in the dust as Coach cranks up the radio and Caitlin kicks her legs in the booster seat. 

* * *

Coach buys the tickets. 

“One for me and one for my stepsister,” she says briskly, shooting Addy a helpless grimace when the associate’s attention turns to the register. 

It puts a bit of a damper on Addy’s mood, but one that’s quickly remedied when they actually get to see the fish. Not just fish, but turtles, stingrays, crabs, and octopi. Coach was right (as she is about so many things), there’s next to no one here. Just a few elderly folks and some mothers with kids, mothers with dowdy haircuts and fanny packs, who must be those Moms™ that Coach certainly isn’t and will never be, no matter what Matt fucking French wants. 

What Matt wants has no place here. 

With so few people, none of whom know them, Addy can actually hold Coach’s hand. Their fingers interlace and they swing them together as they walk, Coach easily guiding Caitlin’s stroller one-handed. Caitlin coos and chirrups excitedly at tiny ridged seahorses, their tails curled around strands of kelp. 

Translucent moon jellyfish bob in lava lamp shaped tanks blinking different colors. Vivid red, glowing green, dreamlike purple. The lights dance over Coach’s features, kaleidoscopic, and Addy feverishly burns to kiss her. But that she wouldn’t dare do in public no matter who’s here, so she only holds her hand tighter instead. 

They walk from tank to tank, admiring hammerhead sharks circling replica sunken ships and Atlantean statues, svelte angelfish swimming gracefully, long, serpentine eels sliding out from underneath their rocks with open jaws. 

There’s a small tide pool where some of the marine life can be touched. Addy skims her fingertips over a smooth clamshell, gasping softly when she feels something shift inside. Coach laughs so lightly, hoisting Caitlin upon her hip and guiding her pudgy hand under the shallow water. Her eyes widen, cartoonish as her fingers brush the starfish and Addy’s heart swells with true happiness for the first time in forever. 

When they’ve made their way through the aquarium, Addy buys Caitlin a small plush starfish for her to keep. Coach buys a few things too, but Addy doesn’t see what. Coach shoos her away when she tries to take a peek and giggling, Addy realizes at least something must be a gift for her. 

After the aquarium, they get matcha lattes and Caitlin falls asleep in her stroller, soft starfish clutched under her arm. 

“I wish things could always be like this,” Addy finds herself blurting.

Coach tucks a a blonde wavelet behind her ear, gazing at Addy with enigmatic intensity as her tongue swipes some green foam from her bottom lip. 

“At least we have today, Addy.” 

Addy lowers her head, contemplatively sipping at her matcha. Suddenly something bumps her ankle. Addy splutters softly. It happens again as Coach grins this winsome grin. Oh. They’re playing footsie, something Addy hasn’t done since— since things she won’t think of now while she’s still far away from everything that hurts. 

She breathes a laugh and retaliates, toeing Coach’s boots. Coach huffs and moves them away grazing Addy’s shins as Addy fights to hook sneakers around an ankle. They play for awhile, the beginnings of Addy’s concerns forgotten in favor of their friendly competition. 

She does her best but eventually Coach wins the game, Addy’s foot trapped between her boots. 

* * *

Addy’s doing elbow planks with donkey kicks on an exercise mat in the living room when her mother comes home. 

“Hey,” she calls, not bothering to look over, instead watching the bead of perspiration that drops from her nose. 

“Hey.” Faith saunters in, rests her hands on the back of the worn couch. “Let’s talk for a minute.” 

“Uh, can it wait?” Addy grunts softly with effort, core pleasantly burning. 

“Not this time. I’m your mother, Adelaide, you can give me two minutes,” she says, clipped but not unkind. 

Addy kicks one more time and concedes, rising from the mat. She puts her towel around her shoulders and warily winds around the couch. 

“What’s up?” 

“I think we should talk about Beth,” she murmurs solemnly, inclining her head. “You’ve barely breathed a word about her since the funeral, but I can see everything is taking a toll on you. You’re erratic, you’re up all hours of the night, you’re hardly eating…” 

Addy’s pretty sure she was all of those things before Beth smashed her skull in. Maybe now her mom just finally feels like she has a reason to notice. 

“Didn’t get this body from overeating, Mom,” Addy deadpans, misdirection. 

“Don’t get smart, I’m serious. We never talk anymore.” Her mother begins to reach for her hand, then stops short, curling her fingers into the fabric of the couch. “We’re like strangers in the same house and it shouldn’t be this way, especially not with everything you’re going through right now. I’m trying, Addy…” 

“I don’t want to talk about the worst day of my life.” Addy hugs her arms around herself even though her skin is too sticky, hot. 

“You can’t keep everything bottled up all the time. You need to work through it.” 

“Work through it,” Addy spits out like bitter medicine. 

Beth’s blood stains remain in her cheer skirt. Faded but not gone, and it’s just one reminder of reminders everywhere, every day, all the time. And her mother could never understand because she never loved anyone like Beth, nor was loved by anyone like Beth. Faith Hanlon has always been her own person. Addy Hanlon has always been a counterpart of a set of two. 

“I shouldn’t have said it like that,” she says apologetically, eyes fluttering. “I meant that you need to work through your feelings. If you don’t want to talk to me, Addy, then I want you to see the school counselor when your suspension is up. I’d like it to be me, but it doesn’t have to be. It just has to be someone.” 

“I’m talking to someone,” Addy tells her, backtracking to the mat in the living room. “I promise I’m talking to someone.” 

Before her mom can ask who, Addy puts her earbuds in and resumes her exercises.

* * *

The aquarium was the best day, hands down, but all days with Coach since her suspension have been good days. Fucking away the pain in her bed, fancy pillows on the floor, scented fabric softener in the sheets. Going to the backyard and practicing, shoes sliding slick in the grass. Cuddling on the couch, Caitlin cozy between them, cartoons playing on the TV. 

Today is not such a day. 

Coach is drinking when Addy comes over, and it’s not even ten o’clock yet. 

Addy watches as she gulps merlot from the glass and the red stains the corners of her mouth, irresistibly reminding Addy of blood. Coach measures Addy with her eyes and fills a glass for her without even asking. 

Addy sits and swills, appreciating the smooth undercurrent of flavor. 

“He hates me,” Coach sighs raggedly. “I think he really fucking hates me.” 

“I think my mom would hate me,” Addy mumbles, studying the glint of her own reflection in the wine glass, “if she knew what I was really like. Beth is the only person who ever knew what I was really like…before you came along.” 

Coach refills her glass and takes another gulp. “Do you miss her?” 

“More and more every day.” Addy traces the rim of the glass with her fingernail. “Do you miss Will?” 

“Not a bit.” Coach's lips unfurl wryly. “But I dream about him all the time.” 

“I do too.” Addy inhales shakily, her nerves twitching, almost as if her nightmares are reverberating through them. “I dream about him spitting bloody teeth all over me.” 

“That sounds a lot like my dreams too.” Coach’s hand crawls across the table and curls around Addy’s. “I think he’s asking me for help in a lot of them. Maybe even begging, but I can’t understand a word over the waterfall of blood and teeth gushing from his mouth.” 

Addy looks down at her hands and briefly, fiercely wishes she were two years older. She would take Coach out of here, out of this loveless marriage, out of this backwater bullshit town. They could go wherever the fuck they wanted to go, and they’d still be broken together, but at the very least, they would be far away from everything that broke them. 

“I dream about Beth too. They’re usually nightmares, like with Will. I’ll see her fall again and again. Sometimes from the pyramid, like how it really happened. Sometimes I see her jump into the ravine at Lanvers. Or off the roof of the Playland motel. I’m always trying to catch her, but I never do.” 

“Oh, Addy…” 

“Sometimes they’re not nightmares,” Addy croaks, anguished, her heart this infected wound incapable of scabs that last. “I dream that Beth woke up and we had a big party that her dad went all out on, with like, giant confetti bombs and ten kinds of cheesecake. Those ones are worse, because when I wake up, I have to remember that she never did. It’s like losing her all over again.” 

Coach squeezes Addy’s hand as she shuts her eyes tight for a very long moment. When they open again, they well with sorrow and to Addy’s shock, tears. 

“If I could make your dream come true, I would.” 

Addy picks up Coach’s hand and kisses it with quivering lips. 

“We’ve been through so much together, Addy,” Coach says wearily. “The things we’ve gone through together, the things we’ve seen and done for each other. No one could ever understand it but us.” 

Addy absorbs Coach’s words, slowly bobbing her head in agreement. She doesn’t think anyone could ever love her like Coach does, knowing what she is underneath the glitter and sequins. Perhaps Beth could’ve, but then, Beth isn’t here precisely because of the things Addy has done and there is something to be said for that. Something like foul slime deep in her soul, some pit of toxic waste. 

For a long time they just drink. They finish the bottle of merlot between them and Addy hasn’t had breakfast, so she’s stumbling to Coach’s room. The clothes come off and they’re tangled and Addy’s sloppily licking Coach’s tongue as she rocks her hips to the knee between her thighs. 

She starts crying halfway through, sinks her teeth into her index finger to muffle it as best she can, pretends it’s just overstimulation from her clit, because at this point, that’s where Coach’s mouth is. 

* * *

Later, after even more drinking and putting a fussy Caitlin down for a nap, Coach pulls out a small gift bag. 

“I got this for you at the aquarium,” she hums. “Didn’t give it to you then, because I wanted to save it for a rainy day.” 

She takes a thin, silver bracelet with a turtle charm out of the bag and secures it onto Addy’s wrist. And Coach couldn’t possibly realize what she’s doing, but the whole thing rings far too familiar and it grinds Addy down, kneads her and stretches her out like Caitlin’s Play-Doh. She springs up from the couch and races to the bathroom, knees crashing painfully to the tile as she snaps over the toilet. 

Her vomit splashes into the ceramic bowl in a thick, slurry torrent. She coughs out the sour taste, shuddering. Coach is in her peripheral, then kneeled beside her, hand stroking between Addy’s shoulder blades. 

“Had too much to drink, huh?”

“You can’t leave me, Colette,” Addy slurs, staring up at her as she rests her head on the toilet seat. “I’ve lost too much to be with you. To be what I am to you, to be everything only you believed I could be.” 

Coach pauses. Her hand stills against Addy’s back and the look she gives her is ominously unreadable. 

* * *

Addy has no normalcy with Beth dead, but she finds a kind of routine that’s about as close as she can get in the next weeks that follow. 

Coach is the one who rules the squad, but Addy is the one who enforces the rules. Tacy seems to have taken her threat seriously, at the least, behaves in Addy’s presence, shoots cautious looks Addy’s way if she catches herself on the verge of slipping. Rabbit, meet Fox. 

They will get to State Championships. 

They will get to State Championships. 

They will get to State Championships. 

Addy doesn’t tolerate much fucking around, unless it’s in the locker room. When they’re in the gym, they need to be on the ball. They need to fine tune their elastic, muscled bodies to a perfect science. They need to be as in sync as dolphins in the sea, echolocating images right into each other’s brains. 

Addy will not be complacent with anything less than the best than they can be and anyone who truly wants to test her patience will meet the bottom of her shoe. It is not only Coach she has lost for, but her goals in their entirety. He losses will not be in vain. 

Things with Coach are mostly the same. They are in love but they are broken, and they make love to make themselves less broken but their circumstances are messy and get in the way. Namely Matt fucking French keeps getting in the way. It’s Addy’s mom sometimes too, they’ve never been that close, but these days, it’s like she’s trying to be her best friend. Maybe because she lost the one she had. 

They make it work though.

If Addy thinks too hard about things she cannot change, things that still live inside of her, feasting if she gets weak enough to let them— well, there’s cocaine for that. It’s a little bit pricey, but she’s got her job at the Dairy Cream back and Coach still pays her for babysitting Caitlin, although that’s always more of a treat than a chore. 

Coke’s not as bad as people make it out to be. It’s a better comfort than booze, Addy thinks. Especially if you’re a cheerleader. The latter makes you lazy and packs the pounds on. The former amps you up and takes them off.

* * *

Addy’s semblance of normalcy is sabotaged the day Coach comes to practice with a swollen cheek of sallow bruising. Nausea washes over Addy at the sight of it. Coach won’t meet her eyes, either. 

It doesn’t impact her during practice. She still runs them perfectly ragged, tumbling drills, walkovers, handsprings and back tucks. Tells the squad she got hurt when some klutzy, stupid neighbor kid with sweaty hands lost his grip when he swung his baseball bat. It flew and cracked her right in the face. She says these things and she doesn’t look at Addy once. Addy knows they’re lies. 

All through practice, she can’t tear her eyes from Coach’s bruised face. Anxiety threatens to swallow her whole, stomach in ropes and headache building. She has the sick but marrow deep sense that what happened was no accident at all. 

Addy lingers when the rest of the gym has cleared out and finally Coach looks at her. She jerks her head in the direction of her office and they go inside to talk. 

“Did Matt hit you?” Addy asks, point blank. 

“Yes,” Coach breathes thickly, almost a whine. All through practice she remained as phlegmatic and intimidating as ever, but here, when it’s only she and Addy, Coach lets her guard down. 

She throws her arms around Addy, grabbing her up in a desperate, bone-crushing hug, chin sliding over Addy’s shoulder. 

“You know how bad things have been between us, Addy. He’s never forgiven me and he never will. He hates me and he wants me to know, he’s been constantly going out of his way for months to do whatever little thing he can to hurt me, or undermine me, or cut me down.” 

“I know,” Addy mutters, straining to keep her voice low as the rage seethes inside. 

“I’ve finally had enough. I told him I wanted to separate and he hit me. Just like that, he hit me.” 

The Addy of six months ago would never have believed Matt French, with his potato looks and personality of a cardboard cutout, could ever do such a thing. The Addy of today knows better and she can feel her blood boiling. 

“Piece of shit,” she snarls. 

Coach loosens her grip on Addy, hands sliding down to rest lightly against her hips as she moves back enough to look Addy in the face. 

“I can’t stay with him, Addy. Not after this. I have to leave for my sake and Caitlin’s.” She nibbles at her lip, eyes shiny with unshed tears. 

Addy nods hastily. She doesn’t want Coach or Caitlin in that environment. “Where are you going?” 

“My mother’s, I think,” Coach says, brow furrowing in distress. 

“But you hate her,” Addy splutters. 

“Hate’s a strong word, but…” Coach trails off and then gives herself a shake. “I don’t have anywhere else to go, Addy. It’s not like I can stay with you.” 

Addy uncomfortably rubs at the nape of her neck. “How long are you gonna be gone?” 

Coach’s tears fall, rolling down her cheeks as she shakes her head back and forth. 

“I don’t know. I might not come back, Addy.” 

Addy freezes, apprehension shifting to full-blown panic. Coach can’t go. Coach can’t leave her. Not after everything else. 

“I don’t want to leave,” Coach continues, wiping her tears away with the corner of her sleeve and wincing as she brushes her bruise. “But we both know what Matt’s capable of. I never thought he’d turn on me, but that was obviously my mistake.” 

“We’ll figure something else out,” Addy urges. “Please, Coach, please. I need you…let me help you figure out another way.” 

Coach’s eyes narrow, features hardening as she concentrates. Addy waits with bated breath. 

“Addy, do you ever have access to your mom’s gun?” 

“What?” Addy startles, perturbed. 

“Relax,” Coach says, holding up her hands. “I would never hurt Matt. But he doesn’t know that. He’s been treating me like a heartless monster since he found out about Will. So maybe we could threaten him.” 

“With my mom’s gun?” Addy questions, dubious. She irresistibly thinks of Beth in the woods and Will on the floor. 

“Well, he’d really have to think he was in danger to get scared off,” Coach goes on, as though she has it all planned out. “Think about it, Addy, it’s not like he could call the cops. It’d be the perfect way to scare him off.” 

“And if Matt’s scared off, you and Caitlin can stay,” Addy murmurs, weighing the pros and the cons.

“Exactly.” 

“Then the choice is easy,” Addy decides, even though it doesn’t feel easy at all, nausea churning her stomach. “I pick you and Caitlin, we can borrow my mom’s gun.” 

“Oh, Addy.” Coach holds Addy’s face in her hands, tenderly stroking her thumbs over the sleepless crescents underneath her eyes. “You never let me down.” 

And any remaining protest Addy might’ve had is kissed out of her, as Coach warmly captures her lips. 

* * *

Addy snorts some coke to take the edge off and in the dead of night, breaks into her mother’s gun safe. The combination isn’t hard to remember, it’s her very own birthday. 

On some level she knows that this is reckless, dangerous, some kind of crazy person’s venture. But she can’t bear the thought of any more people she loves getting taken away from her. Especially not Coach, not with all that Addy’s sacrificed in the name of being with her, being her work of art.

She’ll wave the gun around and send Matt French fleeing into the night and then boom, job done. Maybe she’ll even have a little fun with it, press the muzzle to his temple and make him shit bricks. It’s what the wife-battering bastard deserves, after all. 

* * *

  
Addy aims the gun at Matt French’s stupidly shocked face, his trout mouth quivering up and down but never quite closing, his hands in the air, fingers spread out. 

Coach stands a few lengths behind her, breathing heavily. 

“Stay there, Coach,” she tells her softly, not daring to look away from Matt, should he try to disarm her. 

Matt is a wild card. He proved that when he killed Sarge Will. He proved it again when he hit Coach’s face, left her cheek puffy and bruised. 

“What are you doing, Addy?” Matt splutters, nakedly aghast. 

Addy savors the satisfaction at seeing him this way. Matt who has ruined so many things so far, who she refuses to let ruin the one good thing Addy has left in her life. Her wild hare heart runs circles around the tortoise and distantly, she wonders if this is how Beth felt that night at Lanvers. 

Did she feel as powerful as this? Booze in her blood and weapon in her hand? 

“It’s not about what I’m doing,” Addy says icily. “It’s about what you’re going to do. So listen closely.” 

Matt flounders, uttering monosyllabic nonsense. 

Addy grunts, aggravated, and gives the gun a pointed shake. “Listen and do what I tell you, and nobody gets hurt. It’s not hard!” 

“Okay,” Matt quavers out, going still as a statute. “I’m listening.” 

“You’re gonna get your keys, get in your car, and go,” Addy says, the coke charging through her veins like a herd of wild zebra. “I don’t care where you go, as long as you don’t come back.” 

Matt finally closes his mouth, looking behind Addy, probably seeking Coach’s gaze. 

“Don’t look at her,” Addy warns, razor sharp. “Your days of treating her like shit are over. You’re going to get in your car and leave. You’re never going to contact Colette or Caitlin ever again, because they deserve better than a man who hits.” 

“Hits?” Matt echoes incredulously, “What—“ 

Suddenly this loud, squalling sound cuts through the air and Addy jumps, startled. Reflexively, she jerks and the gun goes off in her hand with a deafening pop. The recoil rockets up her arms and the weapon falls from her stunned grasp, bouncing onto the carpet. 

The first thing Addy realizes is that the squalling is Caitlin’s. She’s woken up crying as she tends to do sometimes, maybe because of a damp diaper or a bad dream. 

The next thing Addy realizes is the red mist speckling her hands and arms. She abruptly snaps her head up. Her own unintended squall tears from her throat. 

Matt’s eyeball oozes down his face like a goopy egg yolk beneath the raw, apple-sized hole in his brow. He folds forward, topples facedown. Blood puddles beneath his face, glistening under the overhead light. From this angle Addy can see the exit wound, chunky bits of brain matter and fragments of skull stuck in Matt French’s sodden hair. 

Coach hurries forward as a nauseating wave crashes over Addy and a deluge of dread submerges her insides. 

“Oh, oh, oh,” she’s whimpering, ears ringing from the blast. “I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to scare him, like you said.” 

Coach ignores her, kneeing beside Matt. 

Caitlin is still crying, even louder now. Distantly, Addy thinks she should check on her. But the gelid horror of what she’s just done keeps her rooted to the spot. She holds her misted hands in front of her face and watches the tremors wrack them. 

“I didn’t mean to,” she whimpers again, realizes she’s crying, that the tears are hot and streaming down her cheeks. 

The tears aren’t all that’s hot and streaming. There’s a spreading wetness in the crotch of her pants, trickling down her leg. She’s wetting herself. 

“Coach,” she finds herself begging, voice as weak as JV peeps. “Colette.” 

“He’s dead, Addy,” Coach breathes, rising to her feet. 

“Oh, no, no, I didn’t…” Addy begins hyperventilating, struggles to catch her breath as they rapidly rush in and out of her. “I just wanted to scare him off, like we talked about.” 

“I know,” Coach says, placing her hands on Addy’s shoulders and squeezing, miraculously calm. 

(maybe because she’s done this before) 

“What do we do, Coach?” 

“You’re going to get in the shower,” Coach instructs, only the slightest of catches in her voice. “You can get yourself cleaned up and the steam will help clear your head. While you’re in the shower, I am going to break out the bleach and make a plan. Okay?” 

“The gun,” Addy croaks out. “It’s my mom’s. It’s registered to my mom.” 

“Yes, Addy, I'm aware. We’ll take care of that too, Addy.” 

“I can’t get my mom in trouble.” She steals another look at the grisly mess of Matt French’s head and lets out this thin, keening wail. 

“Addy, focus for me.” Coach grips her shoulders tighter and gives her a shake. “It’s game time, now. I need you focused.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Get in the shower,” Coach repeats, face opaque like chimney plumes. “It’ll calm you down. And I need you calm if we’re going to figure this out. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Addy mewls feebly. 

Caitlin has finally stopped crying, all by herself. 

Coach steers Addy down the hall, to the master bathroom. Turns on the faucet for Addy, lets it run hot. Addy shakily undresses herself and Coach makes her exit. Addy steps under the hot spray and continues to eat the screams threatening to burst free from her quaking body. 

She absolutely cannot let herself scream. The neighbors will hear that. They probably already heard the gunshot and this realization drives a sucker punch into her ice cold stomach. 

Addy just killed someone. 

She just shot Matt fucking French in the face. 

When it was determined that Will’s death was a homicide, Addy had wondered what had to exist in another person that enabled them to kill. What sort of evil thing must slither through them to enable such an act, the taking of another human life. Dreading that such a thing could possibly exist in Coach. Entirely floored when she learned it must be inside Matt. 

But now she understands. There wasn’t anything you had to have in you at all. Addy just got spooked, by a baby crying, of all things, and that was enough. That was her answer. 

She wishes she didn’t have it. 

Addy isn’t sure how long she stands in the shower, willing herself to calm down like Coach told her to. Her heart is pounding painfully fast and she supposes it could either be because she snorted too much coke or because she just fucking killed someone, but she’s going to go out on a limb and guess it’s because she just fucking killed someone. 

And dwelling on it like that just amps her heart up even more, it’s going _thumpthumpthumpthumpthump_ , and any second now it’s going to burst right out of her body and splatter against the tile wall. Somehow, it doesn’t. She has no idea how it doesn’t. 

The steam isn’t helping her calm down. It’s actually just making it even harder to breathe. It’s like her lungs have turned to stone and sink inside her, unable to fill. 

Addy turns the faucet off and steps outside, onto the folded towel. She pulls down the towel from the rack and dries herself with hands that never stopped shaking. She puts on Coach’s bathrobe and slips into the hallway. 

She’s halfway to the living room when she hears Coach talking to someone else, her voice hitching between hysterical sobs. 

“I was aware Adelaide had an interest me but I assumed it was innocent. A schoolgirl’s crush. I had no idea she was so infatuated with me, she’d do something like this to my husband.” 

What? 

Addy doesn’t breathe, doesn’t blink, doesn’t twitch a single muscle. She couldn’t have heard that right. She couldn’t have heard that right, Coach would never— 

The next thing she knows, there’s an officer lumbering down the hallway, a tall fellow with a beer gut she remembers seeing at this one cop cookout thing her mother brought her to. Shock drains Addy of every ounce of strength, the words she cannot believe Coach just spoke stuck on loop in her mind. She does not resist as she is read her rights and the cuffs are snapped on, dragging up memories of those bracelets she and Beth would snap on their wrists as kids. 

His sausage fingers grip her upper arm, gruffly towing her along. Matt French still lies facedown, the carpet fibers stiffening as his blood dries. Coach is standing a few lengths from him, and pointedly turns to face the wall as the officer drags Addy past. 

Addy is immediately, powerfully astonished and then she feels betrayal rip through her like a beast, like the grizzly bear on that reality show, shredding her to ribbons with invisible claws. 

“Coach,” she chokes out, distraught, eyes already misting in fear and disbelief. “Help me, the gun was your idea! You said you loved me! W-We love each other…” 

Colette doesn’t even glance her way, but Addy thinks she sees her hand come up to cover her mouth. 

When Addy is deposited unceremoniously in the back of the cruiser, wearing nothing more than Coach’s bathrobe, the realization that Beth was right strikes her right in the heart, bringing forth a fresh flood of useless, overwhelming grief. She sobs all the way to the station, hollowed out of any speck of hope that might’ve remained inside.

**Author's Note:**

> Bad End. 
> 
> Is this technically leaning into Dare Me's noir elements?
> 
> Edit: Rearranged some awkwardly worded sentences and fixed some typos. Lotta typos, my bad.


End file.
